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this book is dedicated with thanks to vernon coleman
an inspiration to self-publishers for over 20 years
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My first thanks must go to my readers, especially those who have taken the trouble to post reviews on Amazon’s websites. I’m sure I speak for many writers when I say that positive reviews – on Amazon and elsewhere – lift the spirits in a way that little else can.
My thanks to my beloved and beautiful daughters Sarah Mercedes and Kerry Portia for their tolerance of the time I devote to writing, and for telling me that my books are wonderful. Their objective criticism is always welcome.
My thanks to Dr Vernon Coleman, a fine English gentleman and a highly successful self-publisher, for his extensive and important body of work; for the effort and time he’s devoted to a number of important campaigns and causes; for inspiring self-publishers for over 20 years; and on a personal note, for penning testimonials for a number of my books which have given me great encouragement, particularly the one he wrote for The Glass Ceiling Delusion. Self-publishers who are disappointed at not being contracted to a commercial publisher should read the Mission Statement of The Publishing House, Vernon Coleman’s self-publishing concern, which I reproduce in the second half of chapter 1. They might then be heartened and proud to be self-publishers; they should be.
My thanks to friend, businessman and Yorkshire-based author Andrew Heslop for his feedback on a number of chapters, most notably the chapter on the financial aspects of the commercial self-publishing model. If he were not so successful as a business consultant he’d possibly write more books so we must hope – for our sakes, if not for his – that he runs out of work. I hope to publish his book of short stories one day. His story about football-playing nuns is a favourite.
My thanks to the highly talented freelance professionals without whom this book would not be what it is: Charlie Wilson, my proofreader/copy editress; Roger Day, my photographer; and John Rose of John Chandler Design Associates. My thanks to John Chandler and Doug Morris of Wordzworth, for their appendices. What’s that? No. I don’t mean they gave me body organs. Give me strength. The appendices in this book.
My thanks to the editors and publishers of the dictionaries of quotations I draw upon in this book, as well as those who run quotation websites. Thanks also to Wikipedia for most of the biographical details I’ve associated with those quotations.
My thanks to Bo Bennett and the other clever chaps (and Melissa) at eBookIt.com for formatting and distributing this ebook edition.
My thanks to you, dear reader, for buying this book. I hope it at least meets your expectations. If you enjoy reading it, would you be so kind as to post a review on Amazon? Thank you.
Please feel free to email me with comments or queries you might have about self-publishing or indeed about any of the topics covered by my books: [email protected].
INTRODUCTION
What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.
Bob Dylan 1941– American singer-songwriter and musician
Making a living by writing is a great way to live, and self-publishing only adds to the pleasure. You keep full control and make more money with every copy sold. You even have the opportunity to live somewhere you’ll enjoy living, possibly in contrast to where you’re living now.
This book will tell you all you need to know about self-publishing without resorting to vanity publishers. All that’s required from you is the ability to write well on topics that the book buying public will find interesting. How difficult can that be?
If you already self-publish, or plan to do so, you’re in good historical company. At one time or another so did Stephen King, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Horace Walpole, Honoré de Balzac, Walt Whitman, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, John Galsworthy, Rudyard Kipling, Beatrix Potter, Lord Byron, Thomas Paine, Mark Twain, Upton Sinclair, WH Davies, Zane Grey, Ezra Pound, DH Lawrence, William Carlos Williams, Alexander Pope, Robbie Burns, James Joyce, Anaïs Nin, Lawrence Stern, and William Blake. Blake even mixed his own inks. I’m not going to suggest you go that far.
I must include the writer who started off his book writing career by self-publishing and who doubtless deems himself fortunate in having his travelogues in some book stores next to my Two Men in a Car, which no doubt helps increase the sales of his books: Bill Bryson.
If you’re going to succeed as a writer, I recommend you do so on your own terms. By all means read books about writing, but only use the advice that is consistent with how your mind works – not how you might like it to work, perhaps like Stephen King’s – and reject the advice that isn’t consistent. Become a distinctive writer. That’s surely the way to maximise your chances of becoming a successful writer. At the very least it’s the way to enjoy writing, which is important too.
In his bestseller On Writing Stephen King advises against using adverbs in association with dialogue: ‘she added, dreamily’ and the like. Well, I love adverbs in association with dialogue. Used well, they add a whole new dimension to dialogue. George Orwell used adverbs all the time.
As a writer I’m an optimist, but when I was an optimist as a publisher in my early days self-publishing I ordered sizeable print runs to lower the price per copy, and ended up with unsold copies – all at a low price per copy. So I developed the model for self-publishing which I’ve outlined in this book. It’s a low-risk and low-cost model which I term ‘commercial self-publishing’.
